The Sound of Broken Glass

by Deborah Crombie

  On the other side rose a higgledy-piggledy jumble of buildings, flanked by a wall with the most garish graffiti Andy had ever seen. No, not graffiti, he realized, but rather a mural with weird creatures depicted in bright, primary colors. It looked as if it had been painted by a giant alien child, and he smiled for the first time that day.

  “There’s a guitar shop,” he said, spying the sign tucked into the lower level of one of the brick-faced buildings.

  Tam popped the door locks and climbed out of the car. “Best keep you out of there, then, hadn’t we? It’s there we’re going.” He pointed towards a steep flight of open metal stairs beside the building, and Andy saw what he’d meant about the amp.

  “Up there?”

  “First level,” said Tam, consulting a note as Andy retrieved the Strat from the back of the Mini.

  “Good God.” Andy stared. “How’d they get the equipment up there?”

  “Stronger backs than yours or mine, I expect.” Tam winked at him and led the way.

  Andy held the railing in one hand and the guitar in the other. When they reached the first landing and ducked into a dark doorway, Andy felt like he’d stepped into a hobbit hole.

  Caleb Hart was waiting for them in a tiny, cluttered anteroom.

  He shook Tam’s hand, but not Andy’s, which suited Andy well enough. He gave Hart credit for knowing that guitarists could be tetchy about having their hands touched.

  “I’ve booked us three hours in studio one, but first an hour in rehearsal space, so you can get a feel for each other.” Hart glanced at his watch. “Poppy’s running a bit late. Saturday trains.”

  “From London?” asked Andy, frowning. He knew the train from Victoria like the back of his hand. It usually ran regularly and unimpeded on Saturdays.

  “Twyford to Paddington.”

  “Twyford? Why the hell is she coming from Twyford?” Andy felt Tam shift uncomfortably at his tone, but it was too late to call it back.

  “Poppy lives outside Twyford,” said Hart. He glanced at Tam as if wondering whether there was some miscommunication. “Her dad’s a vicar in a village near there.”

  Andy just stared at him for a moment before he found his tongue. “She lives with her parents?” He turned to Tam. “She’s a bloody schoolgirl and a vicar’s daughter? What were you—”

  “I was thinking that she’s twenty years old and that she can sing,” Tam snapped. “Don’t make a complete arse of yourself, laddie. What girl that age can afford to live on her own in London?”

  “Are you talking about me?” came a voice from the doorway.

  They all turned, and Andy saw a slight figure, backlit.

  “Poppy. Good to see you,” said Hart with a smile.

  “Bloody trains.” She stepped into the room, and Andy saw her clearly. She wore fur-lined boots, bright flower-patterned tights, and a tiny ruffled skirt beneath a puffy jacket. Her short hair, stuck up in unruly spikes, was the color of his cat’s fur, and slung over her shoulder by a strap was what looked like a case for an electric bass. No one had told him she played an instrument.

  “Hi, Caleb. Tam.” She nodded, then gave Andy an assessing stare. “You must be the hotshot guitarist. I’m Poppy.” She held out a hand encased in a purple fingerless glove, and he shook it awkwardly.

  “I’m Andy, yeah. Andy Monahan. You’re freezing,” he added as he felt the tips of her fingers.

  “Nobody told me I’d have to climb Mount Everest. This is a cool place, though.”

  It was a steep hike from Gipsy Hill Railway Station up to the Crystal Palace triangle, but Andy noticed that she didn’t seem the least bit winded. And she’d come up the outside metal staircase as quietly as the cat she resembled.

  Caleb Hart, however, went into solicitous mode. “Let’s get you upstairs, and warm. I’ve already got the heaters going in the big rehearsal space.”

  “I’m fine, Caleb,” she said with a shrug. “But I want to see it. We’re going up?”

  “Next level.”

  Poppy led the way out, taking the stairs as if she had springs in the heels of her boots, her instrument case bouncing against her hip.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d met her,” Andy whispered to Tam as they brought up the rear.

  “I went to hear her at the Troubadour. You didn’t think I’d get you into something without being sure she was a goer? She’s something special, I’m telling you. A bloomin’ prodigy.”

  That probably meant spoiled rotten, in Andy’s experience. But she had balls for a vicar’s daughter, he had to admit. At twenty, he’d been tough and independent in a street-smart way, but this girl had a poise and confidence he still hadn’t managed to achieve.

  Her speaking voice, however, while pleasant, was straight Home Counties middle class, and he hoped to God she didn’t sing in that little-girl-breathy indie style that made him want to grind his teeth. Or even worse, some sort of faux working-class thing like Kate Nash. At least with that accent and her slight stature she was not likely to be another Adele clone.

  They reached the next level and stepped into a space completely different from the cramped anteroom to the studios below.

  “Very cool,” said Poppy, taking it in, and Andy had to agree.

  The room was long and open, with light pouring in the large windows that overlooked the tree-clad hillside to the west. There were several guitar amps, a two-mic setup, small-scale recording equipment, and, by the windows, a baby grand piano that reflected the mottled gray sky in its black-lacquered top.

  “Oh, lovely, Caleb. Thank you,” said Poppy, giving her manager a quick hug that was not the least bit coy. He might have been a favorite uncle.

  She stripped off jacket and gloves, then bent to unlatch her guitar case. When she took out the instrument, Andy gave a low whistle in spite of himself. It was a Fender Pastorius bass, fretless—an instrument only for a very accomplished musician.

  “Can you really play that thing?” he asked.

  Poppy shot him a look from under brows that were a dark punctuation to her marmalade hair. “Wait and see, guitar boy.”

  Stung, he shot back, “A nice prezzie from your daddy?”

  She stood, slipping the bass strap over her head, and seemed to collect herself for a moment. Then she looked him directly in the eyes and said levelly, “I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. We manage, but my father is a Church of England vicar, and there is no way he could afford an instrument like this. I worked all the way through school giving music lessons to spotty, hormonal boys to buy this bass, and I bloody well deserve it. So just shut the fuck up, okay?”

  She waited, and when he didn’t reply, she nodded, as if something had been settled between them. Then she plugged the Fender into an amp and said, “Let’s see what you got, guitar boy.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and after the Great Exhibition finished in October 1851 he had the idea of moving it to Penge Place Estate, Sydenham, as a “Winter Park and Garden under Glass” . . . Penge Place, now called Crystal Palace Park, was owned by Paxton’s friend and railway entrepreneur Leo Schuster.

  —www.bbc.co.uk

  Once the coroner’s van arrived, Gemma left the crime scene techs to get on with things, and DC Shara MacNicols in charge of interviewing the hotel staff. Seeing Shara’s mutinous expression, she’d said, “Unless you’d rather give the death notification? And, Shara, I think you’ll do better with sympathy here. Whether or not the hotel was breaking any rules is not our main concern—at least not until we know how our Mr. Arnott came to be here,” she added, and got a grudging nod in return.

  When Melody had double-checked the address she’d entered for Vincent Arnott, she looped round into Fox Hill and then up the steep incline of Belvedere Road, back towards the Crystal Palace triangle.

  “He could certainly have walked to the hotel,” Melody said as she parked at the curb and pulled up the Clio’s hand brake as an extra precaution.

&
nbsp; Glancing at the vista spread below them as she got out of the car, Gemma wondered if, on a clear day, you could see all the way to the Channel. The view up the hill was pretty impressive, too. “He’d have been fit if he did that climb on a regular basis,” she said. “Never mind what else he got up to.”

  She examined the house, half hidden behind a fortress of hedges. It was detached, a soft, brown brick with white trim on the windows and doors, and large upper and lower bay-fronted rooms on one side. Behind the shelter of the hedges, the lawn was immaculate, and the shrubs in the beds surrounding the house were trimmed to within an inch of their lives. A late-model silver BMW was parked in the curving drive.

  “Eminently respectable,” mused Melody, nodding at the house. “In an eminently respectable street. Not a hair out of place.”

  “A bit like our man’s clothes and wallet.”

  “A barrister’s tidy mind?” suggested Melody.

  “We’ll see.” As Gemma tightened her scarf against the wind, she noticed Melody straightening her already perfectly aligned coat. These were little adjustments to their emotional armor, she knew. No one, no matter how long they’d been on the job, liked doing death notifications. A small part of her hoped that Mr. Arnott had lived alone, but a flash of movement at the sitting room window told her otherwise. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  They walked briskly up the drive. By the time they reached the front door, it opened, and a woman peeped out. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but my husband doesn’t like solicitors. Or Jehovah’s Witnesses.” She was small, her plain face free of makeup, her short brown hair showing an inch of white at the roots, as if she’d forgotten to have it colored, and she wore what looked like a mismatched assortment of gardening clothes.

  “Mrs. Arnott?” asked Gemma. She and Melody both had their warrant cards ready. “I’m afraid we’re not selling anything. We’re police officers. Can we come in and speak to you?”

  “Police officers? But you don’t look it.” Mrs. Arnott merely looked puzzled.

  “We’re CID, Mrs. Arnott. I’m Detective Inspector James, and this is Sergeant Talbot.”

  The woman blinked pale eyes and frowned. “Has there been a burglary? I’m sure I don’t know anything that could help you.”

  “Mrs. Arnott, may we come in? I’m afraid it’s personal.”

  “Vincent won’t like it,” said Mrs. Arnott, hesitating. She scrutinized Gemma’s ID, then Melody’s. “He says you can never trust a card or a name badge, like those people who say they’re from the gas company but aren’t, really. But it is cold, and I’m sure he wouldn’t object to women.” She opened the door a little wider and stepped back.

  Gemma threw Melody a puzzled glance of her own as they followed Mrs. Arnott inside. “Is your husband at home, Mrs. Arnott?” she asked as they stood in the tiled entry hall. The inside of the house looked as neatly manicured as the outside.

  “Oh, no. He must have gone to the shops.”

  “Must have?”

  “Well, I’m not quite sure.” Mrs. Arnott blinked at them again, then looked round as if her husband might appear from out of thin air. There was something childlike about her, and Gemma began to wonder if she was quite all there. “I thought he was still asleep when I got up,” she continued. “But he must have gone out early for his paper. Vincent sometimes likes to go out for his paper and a coffee on a Saturday.”

  “It’s almost noon, Mrs. Arnott,” Gemma said, but gently. “So you haven’t actually seen your husband this morning?”

  “No. No, I suppose I haven’t. We have our separate rooms, you see. Vincent says he can’t do with my tossing and turning.”

  “And last night? Was your husband out last night?”

  “He walked up to the pub. He usually does on a Friday evening. I don’t care for it myself.”

  “Do you know what time he came in?” Gemma asked.

  “Well, I can’t be sure. I go to bed early. Up with the larks, you know.” Mrs. Arnott smiled at them, uncertainly. “What is this about? I’m sure Vincent can help you when he gets home.”

  Gemma met Melody’s eyes again. “Mrs. Arnott, is there someplace we can sit down?”

  “I suppose we could go in the kitchen.” Turning, she led them through the cream hallway past a dining room papered in pale brown toile and into a very well-appointed kitchen in the same shades of cream and tan. The neutrality of the room, however, served to emphasize the view from the large windows along the rear wall. They overlooked a garden as riotous, even in its dormant winter state, as the front was severe. This, Gemma guessed, was Mrs. Arnott’s province.

  “I was just going out to prune the roses,” said Mrs. Arnott, with a glance at her mismatched clothes. “I thought the sun might come out for a bit.”

  “Let’s sit down.” With a hand on her elbow, Melody guided the woman to one of the chairs in the breakfast nook. Taking out her phone, she showed Mrs. Arnott the photo she’d snapped of Vincent Arnott’s driving license. Gemma knew that she and Melody both had scanned the house as they walked through for family photos that might make identification easier, but none had been visible. “Is this your husband?” Melody asked.

  Mrs. Arnott’s eyes widened. “Of course it is. But how—why do you have his driving license? Did someone steal it?”

  Gemma drew a breath. Firmly and quickly, that was best. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Arnott,” she said. “But your husband is dead.”

  After a quick lunch, Kincaid decided to take the car to Bethnal Green. Unlike the boys, Charlotte considered a ride in the Astra a major treat. The old green estate car had been a welcome—at least to Kincaid—gift from his parents the previous autumn. But in a neighborhood where most families considered a new Land Rover a downgrade, Kit was embarrassed by it. Toby, after his initial excitement, had begun to copy Kit’s griping.

  “Are we going to see the doggies?” Charlotte asked for the tenth time.

  Kincaid glanced at her, strapped securely into her booster seat in the back. “No promises, love. They might not be at home.”

  “We want to see Jazzer and Henny,” said Charlotte, her brow creasing. Jazzer and Henny were her names for Jagger and Ginger, the two German shepherd dogs that belonged to Louise Phillips’s neighbors, Michael and Tam.

  “And Miss Louise,” Kincaid prompted.

  “Yes,” said Charlotte. When he glanced back, he saw that she’d tucked her face into the top of Bob’s floppy head.

  Louise Phillips had not only been Charlotte’s father’s law partner, but was now the executor of Charlotte’s parents’ estate.

  By the time they reached Louise’s flat near Columbia Road Flower Market, the morning’s drizzle had let up, and Kincaid thought he might take Charlotte to her favorite cupcake shop in Columbia Road once they’d finished their visit.

  “Look,” said Charlotte happily as Kincaid unbuckled her from her seat. “Jazzer and Henny!”

  Indeed, the dogs were looking down at them from the first-floor balcony Louise shared with her neighbors. They began to bark in ecstatic greeting.

  “Some guard dogs you are,” Kincaid said, laughing, as he and Charlotte climbed the outside staircase to the balcony. The dogs were now hurling themselves against the gate in tail-wagging delight.

  Michael came out of the left-hand flat on the balcony. “Duncan. Louise said you were coming.” A landscape designer, Michael wore his graying hair in a ponytail, and no matter the weather, seemed to be perfectly comfortable in Hawaiian shirts and shorts. “Hello, little miss,” he said to Charlotte. “Someone is glad to see you.” Coming to the gate at the top of the stairs, he gave a stern command to the dogs. “You two. Sit.”

  The dogs sat, whining in anticipation, while he opened the gate. “Sit,” he repeated, as Charlotte ran to them, then added, “Kisses.”

  The dogs held their sits but licked Charlotte’s face enthusiastically as she hugged them in turn.

  “Good to see you.” Kincaid shook Michael’s hand. “Tam not in?”
he asked.

  “Recording session. I was just about to take the dogs for a walk. Would you like Charlotte to go with us?”

  “That would be brilliant.” Kincaid had hoped the dogs would keep Charlotte occupied while he talked to Louise, but Michael’s offer was even better.

  “I’ll just get their leads,” said Michael, then he seemed to hesitate. “We won’t be long. Louise is—she tires easily.”

  Kincaid thought he might have said more, but the door on the right of the balcony opened and Louise stepped out. “Hello, Duncan. Hello, Charlotte.” She smiled at them, but Kincaid was shocked at how thin and haggard she looked. Not that she’d ever been robust. “I’ve made some coffee, Duncan, if you want to come in.”

  He realized then that she and Michael had prearranged the dog-walking invitation for Charlotte. “Thanks, Louise. Sounds wonderful.” Michael and Tam, his partner, were more than neighbors to Louise. They were, Kincaid had learned over the past few months, in essence her family, and Louise’s prickliness seemed only to make them more protective of her.

  Kneeling, Kincaid buttoned Charlotte’s coat, then tapped the tip of her nose. “You mind Michael, now. Be a good girl.”

  Charlotte nodded, too excited to speak. Kincaid waited until Michael had leashed the dogs and they had all trooped down the stairs before he followed Louise inside. He glanced at Louise’s sitting room as they passed through—it was, as always, cluttered with books and a veritable snowstorm of papers. The kitchen, however, she kept quite tidy. Michael and Tam liked to tease her, saying it was because she never cooked. It was, Kincaid suspected, true.

  She had made coffee in a cafetière and set out two cups and saucers along with a matching sugar bowl and creamer on the small table. The pieces were delicate bone china in a bird-and-flower pattern, which surprised him. Louise was the least frilly woman he knew.

  “Charlotte’s looking well,” she said as she gestured to him to sit, then pushed down the cafetière’s plunger and filled their cups. “How is she doing?”

  “Fine, as long as she’s at home, or with close friends. But our attempt at school the first week of term was a disaster.” He sighed and added a bit of cream to the coffee, which was delicious but strong enough to stand the spoon in. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I can’t stay off work indefinitely, and Gemma can’t take any more leave, especially with the new job. This is a critical period for her.”